By Christina A. Samuels, Education Week, Vol. 31, Issue 23 | http://bit.ly/zDyEy6
Published Online: March 2, 2012 :: About 20 percent of principals new to a school leave that posting within one or two years, leaving behind a school that generally continues on a downward academic slide after their departure, according to a study released last week by the RAND Corp. on behalf of New York City-based New Leaders.
“The underlying idea is that churn is not good,” said Gina Schuyler Ikemoto, an author of the report and the executive director of research and policy development for New Leaders, formerly known as New Leaders for New Schools. The nonprofit group recruits and trains principals to work in urban districts.
However, the answer is not as simple as just allowing or encouraging those principals to remain in place, she said. “In some cases, the solution is to give folks more time,” Ms. Ikemoto said, but policymakers should make sure they’re selecting the very best candidates for those positions from the start.
RAND Education, a unit of the Santa Monica, Calif.-based RAND Corp., gathered its data from four sources: a web-based survey of 65 principals administered in 2008, a set of 20 case studies of schools led by first-year principals; district-level data on principal placements for 519 principals, and student-level achievement test scores. For the purposes of this research, first-year principals included professionals in their first school leadership position, as well as principals who were new to a school but may have been principals elsewhere.
Broad Mix
The mix of principals studied included those who came through New Leaders training, as well as those who attended other leadership programs. The data came from districts that partner with New Leaders: Memphis (Tenn.) Public Schools; Chicago Public Schools; New York City Public Schools; the District of Columbia Public Schools; Baltimore City Public Schools; and the Oakland Unified School District in California.
The study found that of the 519 principals studied, almost 12 percent left in the first year and nearly 11 percent left in the second year. Principals in schools that had met their adequate yearly progress achievement targets in the years prior to their placement were less likely to leave, as were principals placed in startup schools.
New principals were more likely to leave if test scores dipped in their first year. And when those schools hired a new principal, they usually continued to underperform in the following year, the report noted.
Richard A. Flanary, the senior director of the office of professional development for the Reston, Va.-based National Association of Secondary School Principals, said he was not surprised about the “churn” rate of new principals, nor that the turnover was correlated with low student test scores.
“It takes at least three years for a principal to really get the lay of the land, and feel comfortable enough to make progress,” Mr. Flanary said. But what happens more often, he said, is that weaker, inexperienced principals are brought into a school, prompting an exodus of experienced teachers, making the job of turning around a struggling school that much harder.
The survey also delved into how leaders allocated their time to see if there was a connection between how much time they spent on certain tasks and student achievement. All the principals said they focused most or all of their time on: promoting data use, observing classrooms, creating a healthy school culture, forming leadership teams, and promoting teacher professional development.
However, there seemed to be no link between how much time a principal spent on those areas and student success. But student test scores rose if principals were able to spend their time on those tasks effectively, the report says.
Effective Use of Time
For example, the case studies noted that principals whose schools ultimately experienced gains had “some success” or “a great deal of success” in implementing their key strategies.
“It seems like principals know what to do, but we need to do a better job teaching them how to do it well,” Ms. Ikemoto said.
The results also point to a common element among successful principals: high levels of staff cohesion. One way to promote that cohesion is to respect prior practices and culture, the study suggests.
“Rather than changing everything or making independent decisions, principals and teachers reported that principals were more successful in garnering teacher buy-in when they consulted with staff to gain information on perceived strengths and weaknesses at the school. Beyond the initial diagnosis, these principals honored school philosophies by incorporating them into their school-improvement strategies,” it notes.
Susan M. Gates, another co-author and a senior economist for RAND, said that principal training programs should focus on developing school leaders as “human capital managers.”
“The principal can have great ideas, be great at data-driven decisionmaking, great even at instruction,” she said. But helping the staff buy into major changes is a subtle skill, she said. “You have to be able to get people on board with your vision.”
from the report:
CONCLUSION
There is mounting research evidence showing that principals not new to their school perform more effectively than first-year principals. At the same time, evidence suggests that schools serving low-income children have a harder time retaining their principals and thus tend to have principals with less in-school experience. Effective policy solutions to this retention problem require a deeper understanding of its causes and the effects of principal turnover on schools.
In this report, we examine several sources of qualitative and quantitative data to explore the experiences of newly placed principals. Our examination identifies some potential contributors to the retention challenges facing urban schools.
The focus of our study is somewhat different from that of prior research, which tends to look at principals in general, rather than newly placed principals. A school experiences significant changes with the placement of a first-year principal. In schools where student achievement is low, the hope is that a newly placed principal can turn things around. In schools that are doing well, the expectation is that newly placed principals can maintain that success. Understanding what happens in schools that experience a principal transition, and how outcomes are influenced by the actions taken by principals during the early years of this transition, is critical to an improved understanding of the role that a principal plays in a school’s success.
Turnover Is Common (and Complicated) in Urban Schools We found that separation rates for first-year urban school principals are over 10 percent per year. Furthermore, principals placed in schools that are below AYP experience higher rates of separation than those placed in start-up schools or in schools that are above AYP standards.
Our analysis suggests that these high rates of separation are often due to decisions made by the employer (i.e., district or CMO) rather than the principal. While some argue that it is a good idea for districts to act quickly and replace principals who do not do well, principal turnover can have negative effects on students and teachers. Our research reveals that the replacement principals often fare no better than those who were removed. Overall, schools that lose a new principal after one year do not perform well in the subsequent year under (another) new principal.
More research on schools that experience constant leadership turnover is needed to explore the role of that context in observed outcomes.
Separation rates for first-year principals varied significantly by district, suggesting that district human-capital-management practices played a role in turnover. First-year principals whose schools’ gain scores are in the lowest third of the gain score distribution were more likely than other principals to be removed after one year. This suggests that first-year principals 48 First-Year Principals in Urban School Districts: How Actions and Working Conditions Relate to Outcomes placed in low-performing schools may be under greater scrutiny and thus may be more likely to be removed if they do not quickly improve performance compared with principals placed in high-performing schools.
Our survey and case study analysis lend support to the notion that rapid turnover stems from school, district, or CMO choices rather than from individual principal choices—in particular, a desire to “trade up” to a “better” school. In analyzing the survey responses of the principals who left after one year, we found that many—but by no means all—reported being aware that they would not continue in their positions in the next year. We found no evidence that turnover was being driven by the desire of principals to find positions in better-performing schools in their districts. The survey responses (most planned to seek a principalship in a different district or CMO, or to find a position other than a school principal; few were pursuing a principalship in another school in the same district) combined with our case study findings suggest that much of the early career turnover was in fact involuntary or driven by poor performance.
Among case study principals who did not continue as principals, most had experienced limited success in implementing their key strategies and had struggled with staff buy-in. Both of the principals who had experienced some success but did not continue to the next year had been placed in a district experiencing school closures and reduced demand for principals. The two case study principals who changed schools between year one and year two were transferred by their district or CMO and did not actively seek a move. These principals also experienced challenges related to implementation of their key strategies in the first year. We found no evidence that a new principal’s prior experience was related to retention or success in achieving buy-in.
Sources of Principals’ Success Are Varied Our analysis suggests that there is no single recipe of actions that all first-year principals should take to ensure success for their schools. The extent to which a first-year principal is able determine the school’s needs and develop strategies to address them cannot be neatly summarized in terms of how he or she allocated his or her time across different activities thought to be important in a general sense.
The study found little evidence that principal time allocation in the first year is related to outcomes. The case study data suggest that outcomes are related to the quality of the actions taken rather than the amount of time devoted to different actions per se.
Teacher Capacity and Cohesiveness Are Critical to a Principal’s Success Principals who reported higher teacher capacity and higher levels of collaboration and cohesiveness were significantly more likely to remain in their schools and were also more likely to experience achievement gains during their first year. Because our survey was administered at the end of the principal’s first year, principal reports of teacher capacity and staff cohesiveness could reflect conditions that existed when the principal was put in place or, alternatively, conditions that were influenced by the principal. Our case study research lends support for the latter view in at least some cases; it indicates that first-year principals can have a rapid effect on teacher capacity and staff cohesiveness. The case study principals who experienced achievement gains in the first year were those who focused on improving teacher capacity and staff cohesiveness right away. These principals were able to achieve high levels of buy-in within their first year—even when they walked into challenging circumstances. The case study principals Conclusion 49 who did not experience achievement gains were those who failed to build support for their key strategies.
Our study adds to the growing research suggesting that principal action related to the management of school-level human capital is an important lever through which a principal improves student achievement. More research devoted to understanding the ways in which principals can improve teacher capacity and achieve staff buy-in is warranted. Our case study work highlights some strategies used by principals who were able to get off to a good start in their schools. These strategies include recruiting strong staff immediately, conducting one-onone meetings with all staff, respecting prior practices and culture, being visible in classrooms, and communicating clear and fair expectations
First-Year Principals in
Urban School Districts:
How Actions and Working Conditions
Relate to Outcomes
Susan Burkhauser, Susan M. Gates, Laura S. Hamilton,
Gina Schuyler Ikemoto
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